President of the Portuguese Medical Association (1999-2004)
In November 1989, I was part of the organization of the VII National Medical Congress of the Order of Physicians, which took place at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. It was my responsibility to organize a significant exhibition there on the History of Medicine in general and Portuguese medicine in particular. It would be the 6th Exhibition of the History of Medicine. It did not seem like an easy task to me, as the previous ones had been small in size, documentary in nature and predominantly about the recent history of the profession. It could count on some pieces from the Maximiliano de Lemos Museum, thanks to the collaboration of Professor Amélia Ferraz, its Director. But they were not enough for a significant exhibition. Knowing that Dr. Hermes Castanhas, an illustrious colleague in gynecology and obstetrics, who practiced his specialty in Aveiro, owned and looked after an extraordinary medical museum collection, I asked him for help. Dr. Hermes Castanhas immediately took the opportunity to bring a large part of his collection, if not all of it, to the Gulbenkian, making the Exhibition a high point of the congress, which was greatly appreciated by numerous visitors, both doctors and non-doctors, who confessed to being impressed by its quality and diversity.
The years passed and Dr. Hermes Castanhas continued to dedicate himself and increase his collection, which became the notable House-Museum named after its founder, located in Aradas, Aveiro, which, with more than 1,800 pieces, brings together the most diverse artifacts of a more or less scientific and image-based nature, books, treatises and other objects that, over the centuries, tell the story of a profession that has always been fundamental to the society in which it is inserted. Unfortunately, he passed away in 2015, but his work did not disappear or disperse and so, thanks to his successors, the House-Museum will constitute the central nucleus of the Skope project – Museum of Medicine and Health, which will also include a research center on the History of Medicine and an area dedicated to health promotion.
Dr. Hermes Castanhas, in addition to being a prestigious doctor and a man of culture, honored his profession by researching and publicizing his past, creating and preserving his history. He understood well that the so-called little story, the story of a science, or of a profession, makes the great History more perceptible and better clarifies. By preserving, with a profound knowledge of their meaning and functions, the pieces he collected and knew how to exhibit, Dr. Hermes Castanhas made an important contribution to the History of Portuguese Medicine and, consequently, to the history of Portuguese society by giving it visibility. He also followed the example of notable medical historians who, since the 19th century, have addressed various aspects of the History of Portuguese Medicine, such as Maximiliano de Lemos, Luís de Pina, Augusto Silva Carvalho, Ferreira de Mira, Mário Carmona, José de Vasconcelos e Menezes and others. All of them with notable reference works and mandatory reading, but none, except Professor Maximiliano de Lemos, collecting the tangible evidence of this same history with rigor and knowledge, as Dr. Hermes Castanhas did.
To his memory, to the man, the doctor and the historian who so well knew how to preserve the memory of the History of Portuguese Medicine, I pay tribute of deserved admiration and homage.
